Davide Valsecchi steals Istanbul pole

Davide Valsecchi once again put in a blinding last lap to take top spot in a session – it was free practise yesterday, this time he stole pole away from Pastor Maldonado and Oliver Turvey.

After the first round of qualifying laps Maldonado looked to have everything under control by setting a 1:34.875 with under 10 minutes left in the session, but his final crack at pole fell short, and simply had to wait for everyone else to post new times.

Turvey looked like he was struggling to make the Top 10 for much of the session, after rather worryingly suffering a sticking throttle but suddenly jumped up to third with only seconds to spare, with 3rd all the way down to 15th only covered by 7 tenths of a second.

“Today was perfect, the car was incredibly fast,” said an elated Valsecchi. “The engineers did a good job because between the first and second run they made the car quick enough for pole. It was really good in the last few minutes of qualifying.”